Stories

Two Harbors Creative Waste Reduction Earns a Place as Minnesota Waste Wise Leader

Minnesota Waste Wise, a nonprofit that promotes waste reduction, has recognized our LP Two Harbors mill as a Minnesota Waste Wise Leader for its outstanding waste reduction and recycling efforts. In four years, LP Two Harbors averaged a 120-million-pound annual drop in cumulative waste and an annual cost savings of $1 million. How’d they do it? Innovative thinking. For instance, they captured sawdust in the mill’s baghouses and instead of sending it to a landfill, they sent it to turkey farmers where it’s used as bedding. The farms have gobbled up more than 19 million pounds of wood waste. In December 2006, Two Harbors began reclaiming much of the waste being used by the farms and used it in the process by blending it into the surface layers of the board.

Another Two Harbors program adds bark to our energy bite, literally. We strip the bark from aspen logs before we use them in our manufacturing process. Then we burn the bark to help provide the heat we need to make our products, reducing the use of natural gas or fuel oil.

And when that is done, we sell the wood ash to farmers who use it for agricultural liming. That keeps another 800,000 pounds out of the landfill each year. “LP is a great example of how Minnesota businesses can save money by reducing waste, increasing recycling and reducing energy consumption,” said Mercedes Urban, Waste Wise executive director.

EPA Waste Wise